Late nights and long swims

I stayed up until just after midnight last night attempting to get the scout records in order for our Scout troop. The funny thing is I'm just an Assistant Team Coach (Varsity age boys) and there are others that are called to keep up with the records, but since it wasn't done and my boys were in charge of the Court of Honor, I thought it would be wise to make sure we had Merit Badges and Rank advancements to hand out. I started at 7pm and worked on it until just after midnight. I ended up driving all around the neighborhood gathering information from the last 6 months from the boys.

Today I went swimming again. I had planned on for the month of January to only swim 800 meters (1/2 mile) on Mon, Wed, and Friday, however today while I was swimming and got close to finishing the 800 meters, I thought, I'd go 8 more laps to make it 1200 meters, so I did. When I got close to 1200 meters, I thought I'd go for 8 more laps to make it 1600 meters (1 mile) and I did. I felt really good in the pool today. I swam the mile in just under 29 minutes, on my stomach without stopping. It felt good to swim today. I guess I'll have to adjust my swimming schedule and start swimming longer earlier than I thought.

After swimming, I went to a meeting at work where the CFO had flown in to talk to the employees in Provo. I'm always glad to see CXO's in Provo, it makes me feel like they care about me and my job. It was a great meeting and I'm glad I attended it.

Ice fishing, or not

In reverence to Martin Luther King, Jr our family decided to go ice fishing on Civil Rights Day.

Wondering what fishing has to do with Martin Luther King, Jr? Me too. In reality, I just got the day off and needed something to do with my time off.

Because ice fishing is started in the wee hours of the morning and we have about an hour and a half drive to our fishing destination, we decided that it would be a good idea to sleep at my parents house so we could just wake up, put the kids in the truck and head out on our adventure.

However, when we watched the news last night, we saw that a rather large snow storm was heading our way. We decided we would play it by ear and see if the weatherman was right. I woke up at 5am to see if there was snow and unfortunately there was about 2 inches or so. Since we had to drive up either Provo Canyon or Spanish Fork Canyon, leaving at 5am when it was snowing didn't sound like something we wanted to do, so I went back to bead. We postponed our ice fishing trip for another day with better weather.

We hung out at Mom and Dad's for most of the day. Mom broke her other ankle on Friday night (I say other ankle as a few years back she broke her ankle on a house boat). This time she missed the last step of the stairs leaving the house. This one won't require pins and screws like the last, but she does have a "boot" on for a while.

When the snow stopped I measured 5 inches of new snow.

You know you are in trouble when...

You know you are in trouble when... Brett ends up being the Young Men's Basketball coach.

As with most things in my Young Men's church calling, if I don't do it, it doesn't get done. Pretty sad, but it appears to be my reality.

Last week I barely got enough boys to our first basketball game by driving around the neighborhood "recruiting" deacons and teachers. Apparently even though the only thing Priests talk about is playing basketball, they are all talk and no action when it comes to putting a Young Men's church basketball team together. So myself and the other counselor in the YM's Presidency acted as the coaches for the team last Saturday and we ended up with 6 boys, one to spare. The final score 40 to 4. Our team being the score of 4.

After scoring only 4 points, the boys decided they needed to practice, so even though we don't have a Basketball coach, I scheduled a practice at 6:30 pm on Wed. We announced it in church and surprisingly enough, the boys showed up to practice, however I was the only leader. Having no basketball skills of my own and honestly not knowing enough about the actual rules of basketball to talk intelligently about it, we ended up playing 3 on 3 and worked on getting rebounds.

Fast forward to today. Still no official coach, but I called the other YM's counselor to verify he would be there, which he stated he would. I picked up a few boys on the way to the church and arrived about 10 minutes before the game started. The referee came over to me an asked if I was the coach and if I would fill out the roster. Looking around and still being the only leader from my ward, I took the paper, filled out the boys names and numbers and turned it in. Next we had a prayer and then started the game. We had more boys show up this week than last. We actually had 8 boys. So here I am with 8 boys by myself. I chose 5 of them asked them if they wanted to play "man to man" or zone coverage (some basketball talk I learned last week). They choose man to man and I sent them out on the court. A few minutes into the game, the other YM counselor showed up. The team did much better than last week. We scored 11 points this week. The ending score was 11 to 24, but better than the 4 to 40 beating we took last week. Even though we didn't win, the boys made progress. Progress not perfection. Little by little.

Watching the "Blue-birds"

I woke up today at 5:28am to the sound of Ryan dry-heaving just outside my bedroom. I jumped up (in the dark), found Ryan and quickly carried him into the bathroom. Poor kid, what a way to start out the day. Obviously we kept Ryan home from school today.

Since I was up, I got ready and went to work. I've decided that since I'm swimming Monday, Wed, and Friday during lunch, I might as well exercise Tues and Thurs too. So today during lunch I went and rode a stationary bike for 40 minutes, then took a 15 minute shower. I rode just over 12 miles (20k) Actually saying that I rode 20k sounds so much better. I think I'm going to start saying all my distances in meters and kilometers, they sound so much more impressive than miles.

After work today I spent some time with Sydney while she watched the High School Musical 2 "extras" from the DVD. She told me that we needed to watch the "blue-birds". I looked at her and said, I'm not sure where those are. She then ran upstairs to ask Ryan and came back down and said: "Ryan said the funny song is on the blue-birds".

Oh you mean the Bloopers. So we watched the High School Musical 2 Bloopers together.

I didn't know you could make such good lego spaceships

I swam 1/2 mile again today. I was able to better my time from Friday by about 30 seconds. I was amazed how sore I was from my swim on Friday.

I showered after swimming, but it doesn't matter as I still smell of chlorine. It seems I have to take about 3 showers before I can't smell it anymore. I usually shower when I get home too, but even after that I can still smell chlorine (and I'm itchy). The joys of staying in shape and training for a Triathlon.

After dinner, Deni went out to a funeral of a lady in our ward. The kids and I stayed at home. Sydney wanted to watch a movie and Ryan wanted to play with legos. So I combined both of them. We watched the Emperors New Groove (a favorite at our house.) When Ryan was little he would watch that movie over and over. So when it started, I started quoting the movie. Ryan looked at me and asked me how I knew the words to the movie. He had forgotten how much he liked that movie as a kid and how many times I watched it with him.

I built a lego spaceship while we watched the movie. Ryan saw it and said. "Dad, I didn't know you could make such good lego spaceships."

Everything gets put into perspective when you hear things like that from your kids. I'm sure glad Ryan thinks I'm good at making lego spaceships.

Swimming again

I started swimming again.

It's been a while. Matter of fact the last time I swam was at the end of July when I swam in the Burley Spudman.

I swam 1/2 mile today in 14 minutes and 46 seconds. Not bad for not having swam in 5 months. I swam during lunch. I've been eating lunch at my desk, which means I work through lunch. Not the best idea. It was nice to leave for lunch and swim during lunch. My plans are to swim Monday, Wed and Friday.

Ice skating in Provo

Tonight we went Ice Skating with the Young Men and Young women from the ward for mutual. Since both Deni and I work in with the YM/YW we took our kids along (as we always do). I actually tried to get the kids to want to go to Grandma's during this activity but who wants to pass up Indoor Ice Skating.

I was surprised how well Ryan did. He was off going around the ice rink by himself within seconds of hitting the ice. Sydney didn't quite have the balance to skate by herself. She was ok with me holding one of her hands, however she never caught on to the concept.

It was fun to skate around with the Ryan, Sydney and the kids from the ward.

Deni took Sydney around with one of the Young Women from our ward. I caught this little video clip. Note the Young Man (also from our ward) that thought it would be a good idea to try and push Deni over.


Sydney did much better than this when I took her around the rink.

Party till the cows come home

Dinner was a little rushed tonight as Deni had to run off to a training. As we were cleaning up the dishes, I told the kids that we were going to "party till the cows come home". Deni overheard me and said, "you just called me a cow." We both laughed about it.

I figured it I'd better write it down before Deni does.

In a world where Sea Monsters ruled the ocean....

A while back Deni and I decided that we should start going on "dates" with our kids. Deni would take one kid and I'd take the other. We did this a few months back and it was a hit (for both the kids and for us.)

It was fun for us to spend one on one time with each of the kids and be able to focus only on them and what they wanted to do. Since it was one on one, it was fun to listen to what they wanted to talk about.

We gave the kids a small budget for the night and let them spend it as they wanted. We told them they could go out to eat with the money, or we could eat before went out and spend it on other fun things, or better yet they could spend it all on themselves if they wanted to. As with all good ideas we got busy and we never did it again.

With the new year, we thought we would try and start it up again.

Tonight it was my turn to go out with Ryan. (while Deni and Sydney went out).

Ryan and I started out the night by playing a game of Mario Strikers Charged (which is a really fun Soccer game on the Wii) at our house. Next we drove to Lehi to Thanksgiving Point to the Mammoth Screen Theater, which is an iMax type theater. We bought tickets to "Sea Monsters" in 3D and then walked around the theater looking at dinosaurs.

At 7:20 pm we were seated. I asked the lady if it was going to be a private showing as Ryan and I were the only ones there. We got our 3D glasses and choose our seat. 2 minutes before the movie started, one couple walked in and sat a few rows behind us. It was almost a private showing.

Ryan and I with our 3D glasses on.

Sea Monsters takes audiences on a remarkable journey into the relatively unexplored world of the “other dinosaurs,” those reptiles that lived beneath the water.

The movie alone would have been pretty cool, but the fact that it was 3D made it even better. We enjoyed reaching out attempting to touch the giant "Sea Monsters" as they swam towards us. It was only 45 minutes long, but again, well worth the money.

After the movie we decided to run across the street to Cabelas to look at the giant fish tanks. We didn't have much time at Cabelas but got to look around really quick.

I had a great time with Ryan tonight. I wouldn't change a thing about him. I'm pretty lucky to have such a great son.

Look Dad, no boots

When I woke up this morning it was raining. Within an hour it was snowing hard. By noon it had stopped snowing and we had just over 6 inches of fresh snow.

I went out to shovel the driveway and found the snow was wet and heavy. Great snowman making snow. A few minutes later Deni and the kids got dressed and came outside to build a snowman.

As we were building the snowman we hear, "Mom... Dad...I need some help"

We looked over and we saw this:

Only Sydney would be out in the snow with her boots off.

We had fun making the snowman.

In the past, our snowmen haven't lasted too long. Usually some kids in the neighborhood come by and push it over or do something to it. While we were making our big snowman I had an idea.

We have 2 larger sized rocks in our parkstrip. I threw snow around these rocks and had the kids make smaller snowmen, with the rock packed with snow as the base of the snowman. I'm hoping I don't wake up and see a car stuck on my parkstrip thinking it would be funny to run over a small snowman only to hit my rock.